“Uh ... not yet.”
“What you waiting on?” I guess I barked at her. She jumped back nearly a foot and pressed herself into the woodwork. Mute, she stared at me with round eyes. I sighed. She was as much child as the baby she carried.
I lowered the volume on my voice box. “Get a jacket, and something to put over the baby. I’ll take you around to Harlem Hospital. Josephine needs to be looked at.”
She scurried out the door. I put on my jacket, stuffed the pink dick into a trash bag, and looked for my keys.
Five minutes later I was still looking. Patty waited patiently in the hall. Okay, okay, so everybody has failings. Gambling and losing keys happened to be two of the many I had. I stood stock-still as a realization hit me. I hadn’t shot craps, played a horse, or even thought about getting into a poker game for weeks now.
Hmm ... and it wasn’t about money or the lack of it. That never stopped me before. I’d been too damn busy, that was it. A smile swished around my insides. Tickled the hell out of me, and then I remembered—the new key chain. It had caught my eye at Bunky’s and I’d traded a pair of cuff links for it. I was embarrassed thinking about it now. Me, the guy who used to throw thousands of dollars around—there I was, at Bunky’s Pawnshop, haggling with Bunky for a damn talking key chain.
I charged around the office and clapped like crazy. I held my hands high in the air and clapped. I hunched over and clapped around my toes. Damn, all I needed was taps on my shoes and a sombrero on my head and I could have been one of those fucking flamenco types.
Patty peeked through the door. Her eyes went round again. I was a wild man. I clapped in the corners and all over the fucking room until I heard it—finally.
Irritating as hell. “I’m right here. I’m right here,” it said between each clap. I moved toward the sound. It came from inside the coffee mug on the top of my desk.
Success. I pounced on the cup and retrieved my keys. I also plucked up the small red purse that sat next to the cup—might as well give it to little Josie, no one else had claimed it—and then I exited the office.
Before Patty could muster a question, I whisked her and the baby out to my car, and ignored the puzzled expression on Patty’s face.
Chapter 6
I didn’t get back to the brownstone until eight that evening and jumped into the shower. It took a lot of scrubbing to wash away the day. The doctors at the hospital had kept Patty’s baby. Something serious was going on. They wanted to run tests. When they told her, Patty’s thin form broke in two like a pencil snapping. I felt bad for her so I told her I’d help her out and take her down to Social Services on Monday.
During that short trip to and from the hospital I became aware that I needed a change of scenery in the worst way. I had been cooped up for a week. Hiding. I made myself say the word as I shaved, and I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror while I said it. What was I, a punk? I had to face up to Harry sooner or later. Monday. I’d seek him out on Monday.
Restless and butt-naked, I wandered around the apartment, glanced at my few sticks of furniture, trolled the books scattered everywhere—hey, I was a reader, what can I tell you?—and finally made up my mind to get out. After all, it was Saturday night.
I hauled clothes out of the closet and started to dress. Now, it wasn’t on my great mind, but damn, must have been on my little mind, because I had trouble pushing that stiff mind over to my right pant leg as I pulled on my brown slacks. Another revelation—hadn’t had an oil change or a lube job in a great while, and I sure wasn’t talking about no cars. Maybe I’d get lucky tonight.
My scaled-down wardrobe was a definite handicap, but I jumped sharp as I could. Piss on that fucking Bunky anyhow. I imagined I saw Bunky, his thin face, like a cadaver, staring back at me from the closet door mirror. The sucker had on one of my three-piece suits. I shuddered and shook off the vision.
I pulled a splashy brown and turquoise tie from the closet and wrapped it around the collar of my beige shirt, and slipped into a conservative mud-brown jacket.
Believe me, in my dog days, looking my worst, I wouldn’t be caught dead looking like some pimp, not me. Esquire/GQ was more my style and my taste. Had to have something going for me. Never thought my looks could corral a chicken, and knew I wasn’t too swift in the conversation department. But for some reason I had had my share of women. Go figure.
Too bad they moved in and out of my life like a revolving door. I straightened my tie. The voice of my soon-to-be-ex whined in my ear, “You never want to communicate with me.” I shuddered at the memory. Damn straight. Once I wanted to. I did. But I found I couldn’t.
Shit, I must be getting cabin fever. What was the matter with me? I pushed both Bunky and the whiner down a coal chute and off my mind. Let me out of here.
I peered into the mirror. I looked okay. Maybe even good. That had to be enough. I splashed cologne on my neck and slapped my cheeks. That snapped me back to reality.
A tuneless tune whistled through my lips and I snatched my money clip off the dresser and grinned as I headed for the door. I halted midway, patted all my pockets—then I roamed the apartment for another ten minutes, clapping and looking for my damn keys.
Chapter 7
I slid a Muddy Waters tape into Baby’s tape deck and headed down to 125th Street, then cruised west. Muddy’s guitar twanged, and his blues got all into my underwear. But after a minute I opted for something more upbeat, so I replaced Muddy with Sam Cooke.
Sam sang “Someday a Change Is Gonna Come,” the song that was practically the civil rights anthem, and I got the message. “You fucking-A,” I said, and thumped a responsive amen on the steering wheel.
It was a five-minute drive to Showman’s. I pulled up opposite the club, parked, and started across the street. The place was still holding on, a part of old Harlem, and still a popular place. It had been around since the late forties. Wells and the Lenox Lounge were open too, but they were faded memories of what they used to be. And now the happening jazz of the sixties had moved like a tidal wave downtown, pulling its devoted disciples with it—both black and white.
A shame, I thought, but like Sam says, a change gonna come, and like a wheel, the music will roll back just like everything else. Got to believe that. Music to Harlem is like butter to bread. And Harlem ain’t dead. Not yet, anyways.
From way outside the door I heard the music. The Hammond organ wailed and screamed into the night as I broke through the front door of the club.
Blue drifts of smoke hung in the air under the shelter of the barn-like ceiling. I made my way around the wooden posts, waved hi to a few old-timers, and grabbed an open spot at the bar. It was still early. The Apollo’s show hadn’t let out, and that crowd had yet to arrive.
“Courvoisier, water back,” I yelled above the noise to the bartender. Up and down the length of the room I saw groupings of heads—wooly and natural, processed, silky, braided, beaded, tied-and-dyed.
People hunched together, foreheads touching, voices raised in loud conversation. Laughter dived and swooped through the room. Words poured like clover honey out of people’s mouths.
Black men drank, argued, exchanged easy lies, and occasionally jabbed chicken wings at one another to make a point. Sisters drank, cooed, and cajoled, loud-talked or screeched with laughter, and leaned in to their men like saplings bent into the wind.
I let the voices and the soul of all these black folk lift me. It was tonic to my spirit, like a Sunday morning hallelujah service. I surveyed the room once more, and that’s when I saw her, sitting at the end of the bar. A tiny umbrella floated on top of her cherry-red drink.
I watched fascinated as she held the straw with her lips and maneuvered it past the umbrella and then sucked hard on it. The pull of her lips was long and slow, and my face heated up—beads of sweat popped out on my forehead as I watched. To the beat of the music, she dunked her straw up and down in the glass, and then she took another long pull. That’s when I did something really stupid.
I
ripped up my cocktail napkin, balled the pieces up, and flicked them at her. The same way I did in third grade to Hazel Fletcher across the cafeteria lunch table. At first the woman didn’t notice the bits of paper being shot at her, and she continued to dunk her straw. Then, slowly, she raised her eyes in my direction and watched as I launched the last missile that landed smack in the middle of her drink.
Uh-oh. She arranged her brown velvet face into one of the most disapproving expressions I had ever seen, and plucked the paper out of the drink. And then, she sucked her teeth at me—her lips full, pouty and sexy. Think that discouraged me? No, like my aunt Reba used to say when I was young, I had a hard head and a soft behind.
Nothing had changed in thirty years. I still had a hard head, though my behind had gotten harder. At that moment, my hormones remembered their function, and at their urging I approached the woman.
She didn’t acknowledge me as I slid my bulk into the space right next to her. I waited, smiled, and looked downright goofy. She cut her eyes at me and shifted her body away. A moment passed. Finally, the floodgates of heaven opened. She spoke.
“Only if you’re single, have a job, a place to live, and haven’t been locked up, then, then you can talk to me. Otherwise, don’t, I’m warning you. Don’t waste my time or yours.”
Her voice rained over me like granulated sugar—gritty, but sweet. I looked up at the ceiling and reflected, then inclined my head toward her and said, “Would you go for one out of four?”
She stifled the smile that threatened to erupt from her face, turned to me, and began to swing a nicely shaped calf back and forth in my direction.
I was encouraged, eyes fixed on her calf. “That’s a sign of sexual frustration, you know.” Her leg stopped. Eyes rolled up into her head in disgust, and she turned back to the bar. She slurped noisily at her drink.
Probably the wrong thing to say.
“Let me buy you a drink. That one seems to be gone.”
She continued to show me her back. I wasn’t exactly displeased. It was a fine back. She had on some off-the-shoulder, off-the-back number, and I stood mesmerized, staring at her back and at each of her vertebrae. I was counting them when she turned back, scowling. This I thought to be a good sign, so I said, “Look, they let me out of the asylum one day a week. I’m rusty. The name is Amos, what’s yours?” That smile she had been withholding spread slowly over her face, and she finally offered her hand. “Catherine.”
Two fat dimples appeared on both sides of her cheeks. I was smitten. I took her hand in mine. I reacted without thinking. I looked at her hands. I said, “Damn, baby, you walk on these?”
Paralyzed for a second, she stared at me and then snatched her hand away. She was steaming, I could tell.
“I’m joking, just joking, that’s all.” I wasn’t, but her rough hands caught me by surprise. I sputtered, “No, really, I like women with hands like yours. Makes you know they ain’t afraid of hard work.” And then I grabbed both of her hands in mine. “Look, these hands are tools. Made to build and create—civilizations and things—they’re ... they’re great.”
Now I thought I saw the steam blowing out from both sides of her head.
She said, “I think you should quit while you’re behind.”
Just as I was about to lay more of my sensitive rap on her I heard the hissing of a cobra next to my ear. A wwww, shit, no, it couldn’t be....
The rattle and hiss of asthmatic breathing made me turn. I was belly to belly with Harry the Monkey Chaser.
Wouldn’t you know, in living color and stereophonic sound. Double shit. This wasn’t Monday, and I wasn’t prepared to talk to Harry. His muscle men, Blood Clots One and Two, stood shoulder to shoulder behind him.
“You botherin’ this little lady here?” The lilt of Harry’s West Indian accent swirled around my head like a small and deadly tornado.
Damn. A woman had just shot me down. Now I was going to get shot for real. This wasn’t my day.
I adjusted my tie. “Harry, my man. Where you been?”
“Why you askin’, Amos? You miss me?”
“Uh, sure ...”
“Didn’t know you cared. Visitin’ the island. You know, Trinidad.”
“Is that right? Heard it’s beautiful this time of year.”
“Enough chitty-chat, man. You got something for me? Me boys was looking for you, you know.”
“And they didn’t find me? Your fellows must have let down while you were gone, man.” Harry’s eyes closed into a slit. I didn’t flinch, but my sphincter muscles bunched together.
“You got it on you?”
“Harry, I ain’t stupid, man. Why would I carry that kind of money on me?”
“How ’bout just in case you be runnin’ into me?” Just as I was about to level with Harry, from behind me I heard, “Uncle Harry, why do you want to mess up the only date I’ve had in two months?”
I whipped my head around to look at Catherine. Harry also looked at Catherine. She looked up to me. I looked back at Harry. The three of us looked damned surprised.
Catherine said, “Amos was taking me out to a real nice dinner. I’m starved, aren’t you, Aim?”
Aim? I deadpanned her and said, “Yeah, sure, ready when you are—uh, Cath.”
Harry pushed past me and gave his niece a great hug and a resounding kiss on her cheek. “Me sweet-sweet. Didn’t know you knew this man.”
Catherine showed dimples to her uncle, then to me. She arranged a shawl about her shoulders, picked up her handbag, and said to me, “Ready?”
If I wasn’t in love before, I was now. I took her arm and edged ever so carefully past Harry and his Blood Clots.
“Amos,” Harry called. I tensed and stopped. He pulled a bill from his pocket and stuffed it into the breast pocket of my jacket. “Y’all have a good time, hear? Catherine is me only niece. But I ain’t forgettin’ nothin’, you know. Be checking with you next week.”
Stupefied, I kept my legs moving and waved to Harry. Outside, Catherine turned to me. “I love my uncle, but he has a bad habit. He kills people. I think he might have killed you.”
I blew out breath I didn’t realize I was holding. “I think you may be right. Looks like I owe you. Now what?” I looked into doe-brown eyes, soft from the glow of the moonlight.
She lifted the bill out of my pocket, glanced at it, and replaced it. “A hundred bucks? Looks like you’re taking me to dinner.” I smiled and we started to walk toward Baby when she suddenly stopped short in the middle of the street. What now?
“Wait, what’s the one out of four?”
I waited a minute before answering, then I joked, “I got a place to live?”
Chapter 8
We dined at a place of her choosing, the Pink Teacup, located down in the East Village. The place didn’t impress me much, but it made her happy. I couldn’t complain. Harry was paying for it. We ordered some drinks.
“God, doesn’t it feel good to get out of Harlem?” she said.
She didn’t want to hear what I really thought, so I kept my mouth shut and asked her instead what she did for a living.
“Working as a nurse’s aide now. At Columbia Presbyterian, the graveyard shift. I’m studying to be an R.N. and I go to school in the daytime.” And then she paused.
“I moved back in with my mother five months ago. She had a heart attack, so you can forget about going back to my place. Amos, do you work?”
She was direct, I’ll say that for her. She about blew my breath away. “Ah, the old West Indian work ethic, huh?” I smiled. “Who said anything about going back to your place?”
“Your eyes did. Do you work?”
Lucky it was my eyes she noticed, and not the little mind—I had been pushing it down all evening. “I ... uh, own real estate. Sorry to hear about your mom.”
“She’s getting stronger. Did I hear you say you owned real estate?” Disbelief shimmered in her eyes.
I smiled again. “All black men don’t lie.”
&nb
sp; The waiter chose that moment to set our drinks down. The air shifted between us. She reached for her drink while looking sideways at me and said, “Are you hooked up with my uncle?”
“Not by choice. I lost at poker. I bet more than my ass could cover. I owe Harry.”
“God, that’s a relief.”
“Not to me. Harry’s upset.”
She looked down at the table and studied it. “I mean, it’s a relief you’re not hooked up selling drugs for Uncle Harry.”
“You know about his drug business?”
She made a gesture with her hand. “Of course. He’s my uncle—Harlem village is small. I love my uncle Harry. He’s done a lot for me and my mom, but I don’t like what ...”
“I understand. Me either. Well, I’m surprised to be sitting here with his niece. Scared.”
“Why? Not because I’m Harry’s niece?”
“No, because you’re you. That’s enough to scare me.”
Those dimples appeared in her cheeks, and she made a U-turn in the conversation.
“Tell me about you, Amos. You grew up in Harlem? Your parents live here?”
“Ah, you want the family tree. Okay. My mother, she died in childbirth in thirty-seven. I was raised by my dead mother’s sister, Aunt Reba. Enough said.”
“No, uh-uh, you can’t stop there. You made an awful face just now. That wasn’t a good thing?”
“To be raised by my aunt Reba?” My stomach churned acid at the memory of my childhood.
“My aunt Reba kept a roof over my head and gave me food to eat, and she fulfilled her obligation to her dead sister. Beyond that ...” I chugalugged the rest of my drink and slammed the glass down on the table harder than I meant to.
“Uh-oh, stepped in some manure, didn’t I? Something you don’t want to talk about?”
“No, it’s okay. This is the what’s-your-sign-let’s-get-acquainted part, huh? Let’s get it over with. It should leave us that much more time for fun stuff later—at my place.” I winked and tried to turn it into a joke. She didn’t laugh.
Hard Luck And Trouble Page 3
